Ed Pether

Violin

NEXT Musician 2018-19

Ed Pether became a pupil at Chetham's School of Music aged eleven and studied there for seven years with Professor Wen Zhou Li. At the age of 14 he performed the Bruch concerto with the Aberdeenshire Youth Orchestra and later won Second Prize at Chandos Young Musician of the Year.

Ed continued his studies with Professor Li at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. During his time there he won the Helen Porthouse Paganini Prize and the Roger Raphael Prize. He also took part in masterclasses with James Ehnes, Olivier Charlier and Midori.

Ed also enjoys chamber music and is the second violinist of the Zelkova Quartet, who won the St. Martin-in-the-Fields Chamber Music Competition in 2017, performing Haydn and Debussy. They were also finalists in the 2018 Royal Overseas League Music Competition. As a member of the Pether String Trio he won the RNCM Hirsch Prize, and had a particularly rewarding experience performing Dmitri Sitkovetsky's string trio arrangement of the Bach Goldberg Variations in Manchester Cathedral.

Why are you looking forward to taking part in NEXT?

I applied for NEXT because I have always enjoyed contemporary music and wanted to take a more direct part in it. Being selected as part of the inaugural cohort for NEXT was an exciting opportunity for me to increase my versatility as a musician and performer, and to experience the authentic thrill of performing works that may be unfamiliar and even confounding to many audiences. I look forward to exploring a whole new range of repertoire, both as a soloist and in ensembles, and also to learn from some of the leading professionals in contemporary music.

This year-long project will hopefully lead me to pursue more contemporary performance in the future, further expanding the range of my programmes and musical experience in general.

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG) and Royal Birmingham Conservatoire announce the first 11 musicians to join the NEXT Music programme, a brand new, innovative programme of study to support early career musicians who want to dedicate their professional life to contemporary music.